(no subject)

[nameandnature]

Stuff I found on the web, probably on andrewducker's del.icio.us feed or something.

Psychology Today on ex-Christian ex-ministers and on magical thinking

Psychology Today has a couple of interesting articles, one on ministers who lose their faith, and another on magical thinking. Quoteable quote:

"We tend to ignore how much cognitive effort is required to maintain extreme religious beliefs, which have no supporting evidence whatsoever," says the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson. He likens the process to a cell trying to maintain its osmotic pressure. "You're trying to pump out the mainstream influences all the time. You're trying to maintain this wall, and keep your beliefs inside, and all these other beliefs outside. That's hard work." In some ways, then, at least for fundamentalists, "growing out of it is the easiest thing in the world."

That sounds sort of familiar. I'm not sure I'd consider myself an ex-fundamentalist, but I did find that giving up removed the constant pressure to keep baling.

The stuff about moral contagion in the magical thinking article reminded me of Haggai 2:10-14, where it's clear that cleanness (in the Bible's sense of moral and ceremonial acceptability, rather then lack of dirt) is less contagious than uncleanness. There's possibly a link here to the tendency of some religions to sharply divide the world into non-believers and believers, and to be careful about how much you expose yourself to the non-believing world (q.v. the unequally yoked teaching you get in the more extreme variants of a lot of religions).

Old interview with Philip Pullman

Third Way interviewed Pullman years ago. It's the origin of one of his statements on whether he's an agnostic or an atheist, which I rather like:

Can I elucidate my own position as far as atheism is concerned? I don’t know whether I’m an atheist or an agnostic. I’m both, depending on where the standpoint is.

The totality of what I know is no more than the tiniest pinprick of light in an enormous encircling darkness of all the things I don’t know – which includes the number of atoms in the Atlantic Ocean, the thoughts going through the mind of my next-door neighbour at this moment and what is happening two miles above the surface of the planet Mars. In this illimitable darkness there may be God and I don’t know, because I don’t know.

But if we look at this pinprick of light and come closer to it, like a camera zooming in, so that it gradually expands until here we are, sitting in this room, surrounded by all the things we do know – such as what the time is and how to drive to London and all the other things that we know, what we’ve read about history and what we can find out about science – nowhere in this knowledge that’s available to me do I see the slightest evidence for God.

So, within this tiny circle of light I’m a convinced atheist; but when I step back I can see that the totality of what I know is very small compared to the totality of what I don’t know. So, that’s my position.

This isn't really a surprising statement, but, like Ruth Gledhill's discovery that Richard Dawkins is a liberal Anglican, some people seem surprised that atheists aren't ruling out things which some people would regard as gods. The point is that there's no decent evidence that anyone has met one. Deism is a respectable position, I think (although I'm not sure why you'd bother with it), but religions which claim God has spoken to them are implausible because of God's inability to keep his story straight.

The walls have Google

The thing about blogging is that you never know who's reading. Someone called Voyou makes a post ending with an aside which is critical of A.C. Grayling's response to Terry Eagleton's review of The God Delusion. Grayling turns up in the comments to argue with them.

(I keep turning up more conversations about the Eagleton review: see my bookmarks for the best of them).

"Compact of hypocrisy and secret vice"

Yellow wonders whether or not he should sign the UCCF doctrinal basis in this post and the followup. Signs point to "not". Si Hollett reminds me of myself in my foolish youth.

Comments

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that I think that religion has a very good explanation of what consciousness / qualia are - I'm saying that purely material explanations seem to me to be insufficient.

It seems to me that we could create sufficiently complicated neural networks that would behave in exactly the same way as (say) a human mind - but that's not the same as saying they are consciousness in the way that we are (or more accurately the way I think I am). This path leads me to a place of Chalmersian zombies (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/04/zombie-movie.html), which while it might explain all how all of you guys say you're conscious - it doesn't explain my qualia in a way that is very convincing.

edited to add penrose icon

[naath.livejournal.com]

I feel myself to be concious - however the only way I know that *you* feel yourself to be concious is that you say you are, and that you act in ways I understand as ways that concious-humans act. I think an AI that talked like a concious being would be in all the ways that matter a concious being.

Also I think Penrose is insane; especially his thoughts on how the brain works. Especially his thoughts on how quantum gravity works on the brain. No, really, I had to study this (Josephson was marking it; he is also insane, especially on the brain, and he disagrees entirely with Penrose aiui so insanity is not providing useful information here).

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

I feel myself to be concious - however the only way I know that *you* feel yourself to be concious is that you say you are, and that you act in ways I understand as ways that concious-humans act
Exactly. That's what I said.

I think an AI that talked like a concious being would be in all the ways that matter a concious being.
"All the ways that matter" is the classic strong AI dodge. As I said - it makes sense to me that materialism can lead to human level (or greater) 'intelligent behaviour' zombies, but that doesn't really explain the sense of consciousness that I have of myself, which is ISTM a weakness of materialism.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Your self-conciousness (and mine) is IMO simply an emergent property of a complex system.

Without wandering into the supernatural (souls) or the insane (quantum micro gravity tubule things) I don't see what else it *could* be really. I don't have anything against the zombie idea really, what's wrong with it? Why is it so hard to accept that as a description of reality?

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

So, you're happy to accept that you (not everyone else, you) are a zombie?

[naath.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'd say "happy", because it hurts my brain to think about how brains work; and I still don't have a full understanding of the biology (no-one does aiui).

I think "resigned". Because all the arguments against it are based in "but but but, I don't *like* it!" rather than in actual evidence.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

Exactly. That's kind of my position (if I have to accept a purely material world, which probably I do), except that an additional argument against it is to consider my own subject experience of consciousness to be of higher trustworthiness than the series of logic that leads me to argue that I am just a zombie.

[khoth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, materialism fails to explain consciousness. However, I'd feel that this was more of a blow for it if there was some other proposal floating around that does explain consciousness.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

ISTM that it is a blow to materialism being an explanation for consciousness regardless of any other options being around. That there are no other good explanations doesn't diminish whatever failings might be indicated wrt materialism. Why would it?

[khoth.livejournal.com]

Materialism isn't an explanation of consciousness any more than it's an explanation of general relativity. The fact that we don't have an explanation without invoking ghosts doesn't mean we won't have one, just like the fact that we don't have a non-materialistic explanation of consciousness doesn't mean we'll never have one.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

Yes maybe the answer is out there, and one day we'll find it. On the other hand, maybe it's not. On balance I'm far more swayed by the current arguments in philosophy that argue that it's not than those that argue that it is.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

I don't think Penrose is insane, merely mistaken. If making mistakes in areas outside your field of expertise requires a diagnosis of insanity, then who among is sane enough to make that diagnosis?

His argument in The Emperor's New Mind seems very weak to me. As far as I can tell, it goes like this:

1. Premise: we don't understand quantum gravity.
2. Premise: we don't understand consciousness.
3. Conclusion: they might be related.

Josephson on the other hand has a bit of a persecution complex. I went to a talk by him a few years ago and when someone in the audience asked him (very mildly, in my opinion, given the nonsense he had subjected us to for the last hour) whether he had any evidence for the paranormal phenomena he was talking about he complained that we were all closed-minded bigots.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Not knowing/being wrong are non-insane. Writing books about things that you know squat about so as to look like a confident expert... somewhat more insane.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

purely material explanations [of consciousness] seem to me to be insufficient

Purely material explanations of dark matter are insufficient too.

That's because all explanations of dark matter, material or otherwise, are insufficient. As yet.

But it's a big leap from "I don't understand how something works" to "materialism must be wrong".

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

I didn't say "materialism must be wrong", so please don't put words in my mouth.

Consciousness seems to be in quite a different category to dark matter. There are various potentially testable theories with respect to dark matter, the same is not true with consciousness.

Also, I have a lot more confidence in astrophysicists (who have a good track record with similar problems) that than the pseudo-science pseudo-philosophy of the materialistic models of the mind.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

I didn't say you said "materialism must be wrong", so please don't put words in my mouth.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

You were replying to something I said, and specifically quoted me stating that material explanations were insufficient. At the end of your reply to me you said 'it's a big leap from "I don't understand how something works" to "materialism must be wrong".'

It's not unreasonable to assume that in a reply to me in a sentence that paraphrases what I said (which you quoted) that, you know, you're suggesting that's what I'm proposing.

At best then you were being ambiguous. In the future please be clearer, or don't reply to me.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

Let me unpack my comment a bit for you then.

You indicated in your post that you are influenced by the zombie arguments of David J. Chalmers. Now, Chalmers is, as far I can understand him, which is really not very far since his writings resemble big turgid balls of wool, arguing that "the mere primary possibility of zombies causes problems for materialism". So for Chalmers at least, zombie arguments lead to the conclusion that materialism must be wrong.

Now I know that a slight leaning towards Chalmers does not mean you would agree with everything he says. You might find the argument intriguing without coming to any conclusion on the matter. But it seemed reasonable for me to reply to your allusion to Chalmers with a jibe against him.

[nameandnature]

you're suggesting that's what I'm proposing

Hang on. Your recent posting suggests that "materialism must be wrong" is what you're proposing, and that arguments about consciousness play a role in that.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

Err no.

First of all look at the time stamps on these things. My recent posting was made after these comments. OK, only a day later - but it was a big day.

Secondly, my post does not say materialism must be wrong - at least in terms of creating consciousness. I think for the reasons given above that it probably is wrong, but I wouldn't say "must". I don't think a materialistic view of the brain / consciousness is incompatible with Christianity either (after a rather extensive discussion with Mr toothycat who more or less sees us as AIs).

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

... and, most importantly, if I do think X but make an argument for something like X but not X, I do not want to be told I am saying X. Even if I believe X, if that isn't the argument I made on that occasion I do not want people telling me I made the argument X, which I very much did not.

[nameandnature]

If I've understood it correctly, Chalmers' Zombie argument is not that because science cannot explain our own subjective consciousness, physicalism is wrong. Rather, he argues that because it would be possible to have a world physically identical to our own where everyone is an unconscious zombie, consciousness does not supervene on the physical. Accepting physicalism cannot force you to accept that you are a zombie, because you already know that you're not.

Interestingly, Chalmers argues that, in our world, consciousness arises from certain functional configurations in things like brains, but also possibly in things like silicon chips. I think this means that he thinks a suitable AI would be conscious. If I've understood how he'd relate this to the zombie argument correctly, what he means is that these physical structures generate consciousness but only because of the bridging laws that apply to our world, which generate non-physical consciousness from matter. I'd be grateful if any real philosophers reading this could tell me whether I've understood Chalmers correctly.

I'm puzzled by this because I don't see in what way he thinks consciousness is non-physical. If bridging laws exist, how do they differ from physical laws (assuming those exist), except that, by construction, they don't apply in zombie world.